Temporary Post - Food for .. in the UK

Usual rules. You may take a copy for your own use. Do not share it off the blog without permission. This is rough draft and may change. Never rely on a temporary post. This is a rough draft chapter from Separate Identity 2.

In All the Earth: The United Kingdom

The first concentrated international missionary activity was in the United Kingdom. It is impossible to gage interest in Britain before the publication of Food for Thinking Christians. Previous to its publication the only letters appearing in Zion’s Watch Tower were doctrinal, and few names and few or no locations were noted. There were Bible Examiner readers in Scotland at least by 1850; a letter from William Glen Montcrieff, a noted Scot Conditionalist, appeared in the May 1850 issue. Letters from other British Conditionalists appeared too. There had been some notice of the work in The Rainbow. A British clergyman and Barbourite, Elias H. Tuckett, wrote three articles for Rainbow. There may have been some small residual interest from that.[1] Barbour mailed his Coming of the Lord tract to the British journal The Christadelphian, which reviewed it negatively.[2] Later The Rainbow reviewed The Three Words, though somewhat negatively. The book saw a very limited circulation in England.[3] There is also some indication that Paton mailed material to his relatives in Scotland, but this seems to have born little to no fruitage. Yet, a prominent adherent in Newark, New Jersey, claimed adherents in England and elsewhere. “We have,” he said, “members all over America, England, Australia, I think, and probably in Germany.”[4]

Russell asked John Corbin Sunderlin and later Joseph Jacob Bender (June 21, 1838 - February 10, 1905) to travel to the United Kingdom to publish Food for Thinking Christians and to direct a massive circulation campaign. Sunderlin had prior experience as an itinerate photographer and may have been chosen on that basis. Less is known of J. J. Bender. Historians including Watch Tower writers have never profiled him. Bender was a traveling sales agent for and later owner of a chemical company.[5] In most city directory listings he is noted by the initials “J. J.” but his first name is given in J. F. Diffenbacher’s Directory of Pittsburgh and Allegheny Cities for 1881-1882 and his middle name is found in family papers. Bender published The Standard Class-Book for Sunday-School Teacher’s Minutes in 1871, which was favorably reviewed by The Sunday School Journal that year.[6] In May 1886 he and a partner purchased The Bookmart, a magazine published in Pittsburgh devoted to book and autography collecting.[7]

Sunderlin was in Britain by July 11, 1881, when he registered with Gillig’s American Exchange in London, “a familiar and popular resort with Americans in the English metropolis.”[8] He received his mail and made currency exchanges at Gillig’s. It appears that the British edition of Food for Thinking Christians saw publication before the American edition but this is uncertain. Sunderlin arranged with William Cate, a London printer, to publish the booklet.[9] 

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